We provide experimental evidence on the effects of social disapproval by peers among communities of Uruguayan small-scale fishers exploiting a common pool resource (CPR). The findings indicate that effective peer punishment requires coordination to prevent antisocial targeting and to clarify the social signal conveyed by punishment.

Settler economies are characterised by abundant natural resources, but these are not homogeneous between countries. There is very little literature about the economic development of settler economies that identifies differences within the club in terms of natural resources. We look for differences in energy endowments in New Zealand and Uruguay considering coal and suitable conditions for hydroelectric generation.

The construction sector, whether privately or publicly financed, is characterized by potentially large rents and government intervention making it vulnerable to corruption. Consistent with this, both case-study and survey evidence has been provided highlighting the problem of malfeasance in this sector. In this article, we test the proposition that a bigger construction sector is likely to be inimical to clean government based on a panel of 42 countries over the period 1995–2011.

In this paper we consider how government quality mediates the relationship between fiscal decentralization and regional disparities. Previous work has argued that fiscal decentralization has the potential to reduce income differences across regions but that this potential may not be realized because of governance problems associated with sub-national authorities. Our empirical evidence based on a sample of 24 OECD countries over the period 1984 to 2006 lends a measure of support to this idea. We find that fiscal decentralization promotes regional convergence in high government quality settings but, worryingly, it leads to wider regional disparities in countries with poor governance.

This paper analyzes the carbon dioxide emissions of the service sector
subsystem of Uruguay in 2004. Services, with the exception of transport,
are often considered intangible because of their low level of direct
emissions. However, the provision of services requires inputs produced by
other sectors, including several highly material-intensive sectors.

This article studies how social insurance programs shape individual's incentives to take up registered employment and to report earnings to the tax authorities. The analysis is based on a social insurance reform in Uruguay that extended healthcare coverage to the dependent children of registered private-sector workers. The identification strategy relies on a comparison between individuals with and without dependent children before and after the reform. The reform increased benefit-eligible registered employment by 1.6 percentage points (about 5% above the pre-reform level), mainly due to an increase in labor force participation rather than to movement from unregistered to registered employment. The shift was greater for parents with younger children and for cohabiting adults whose partners' jobs did not provide the couples' children with access to the benefit. Finally, the reform increased the incidence of underreporting of salaried earnings by about 4 percentage points (25% higher than the pre-reform level), mostly for workers employed at small firms. The increase in fiscal revenue from higher levels of registered employment was several orders of magnitude greater than the loss of revenue due to an increase in underreporting.

This “systematic review” focuses on the empirical research that evaluates the causal link between contract enforcement and investment. The evidence available in a variety of academic media, reviewed with established procedures, provides some but weak support for the existence of such link. During 1990–2010 we only found 19 independent studies that empirically test the relationship, and only one that directly examines the effects of an actual institutional reform. Few of the studies test alternative explanations, perform robustness checks, or critically assess the findings. In sum, the broadly accepted hypothesis of direct causation is still awaiting strong empirical backing.